The Lost Chorlton pictures ......... no 17. .........

It’s odd just what you forget.

Now Richard and Muriel’s green grocer’s shop on Beech Road is remembered with fondness by many of us but its neighbour on the corner with Acres Road has long been a mystery to me.

I know that back at the beginning of the 20th century it was an iron mongers and later before the last world war was a cycle shop that also did repairs.

After that I am a bit hazy until in the late 70s it was briefly a piano shop before its long association with food and booze, first as Cafe on the Green and then a succession of bars and restaurants.

My old friend Marjorie remembered that after the war it became a hairdressers which in 1969 was listed as “Joan Newman ladies Hairdresser”.

And I just assumed that by the time I washed up on Beech Road in 1976 it was already a piano shop.

But not so because in 1979 I took this picture of Richard and Muriel’s and clearly it was still a hair dressers, which begs the question did I imagine the piano shop or have I just got my chronology a bit wrong?

Location; Chorlton




Picture; Beech Road, 1979, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

The bridges of Salford and Manchester .......... nu 6 looking over the river from the Irwell Street Bridge

Now I have always taken this one for granted which is a shame because it is not only a fine looking bridge but stands out on the river.

But as Bill pointed out I omitted to include the Irwell Street Bridge in the picture.

And so you will either have to go back to nu 5 or wait for number 8.

Such is the joy of the blog.
Location; Salford

Picture; the Irwell Street Bridge, 2016 from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Walking Eltham High Street .........1905

Now, I make no apologies about posting this image with little in the way of explanation. 

Eltham High Street, 1905

It comes from that smashing little book Eltham Village published in 1984.*

The caption says "Old Eltham High Street and the Brewery circa 1905.  The stationers, diary and corn chandlers opposite St John’s Church prior to road widening”.

The fun will be taking the names of the proprietors and that of the Rising Sun’s landlord and searching for them on the census records.

But that is for another time.

Location; Eltham

Picture; Old Eltham High Street and the Brewery circa 1905, from Eltham Village.

*Eltham Village,  Gus White, Ian Murdock and Paula Richardson in 1984 and published by G & Pi Publications Eltham

Down in the parish churchyard by Chorlton green in 1976

Well having almost exhausted the collection of images on Chorlton in the 1980s, I think it’s time to wander back another decade.

We are in the parish graveyard in 1976 and I have to say despite walking through the place many times I have no recollection of it looking like this.

And I pretend to be a historian.

Still looking back through the back catalogue the place was like this in the 1970s and as you would expect plenty more from before.

So I shall leave you with Lois’s picture of the graveyard just before it was cleared and landscaped, but if you want more follow the link.*

Picture St Clement’s churchyard in 1976, from the collection of Lois Elsden

*St Clement's Church
http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/St%20Clement%27s%20Church

The bridges of Salford and Manchester .......... nu 5 the Irwell Street Bridge

Now I have always taken this one for granted which is a shame because it is not only a fine looking bridge but stands out on the river.

Location; Salford










Picture; the Irwell Street Bridge, 2016 from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Uncovering the secrets of Ivy Court on Eltham High Street

Now I am intrigued by this picture which dates from 1909.

The caption just says, “site of the London and South-Western Bank (High Street), House formerly the residence of the late Miss Fry, now of Mr Coulson).”

Not much to go on I grant you but a start.

The bank had been formed in 1862 and merged with Barclays in 1918, all of which would seem to put our picture on the site of the modern Barclays Bank in the High Street.

But this was built in 1932 which seems a long time between our picture and the current building dispensing its cash.

And so to Miss Fry who was one of two sisters who lived on the High Street at Ivy Court.

They were the daughters of John Fry, who owned Jubilee Buildings as well as other properties and was one of those self made men.

The family home was on the north side of the High Street behind a long garden which fronted the main road and commanded a fine view up across fields to the woods beyond.

The house had ten rooms and this was where Harriet and Lydia saw out their days.

Harriet died in 1895, and Lydia in 1907 and thanks to their father they lived on “income from interest” and both left effects worth over £1200.

Their house is still there behind the bank.  “An ornamental iron gate alongside [the bank] frames a path leading to a house of the mid 1820s in a secluded location [which] is now offices.”*

Mr Frederick Colson and his wife Lucy and three children were still in Ivy Court in the April of 1911.

He was a solicitor and the family had moved from Westmount Road where they had been a decade earlier.

Their new address was listed as 29B, which helps  solve the mystery of when the bank was built.

Back when the Fry sisters lived at Ivy Court it was numbered 29, but by 1911 number 29 has the postal address of the London and South Western Bank, and was also home to Harry Wallis the bank manager and his wife and daughter.

So sometime after our two chaps posed infront of Ivy Court part of the garden became a bank and in the fullness of time Barclays chose to demolish their old premises and build the one we see today.

All of which now just requires a picture of Ivy Court as it is now, down that path from the High Street, beside the bank.

And as you would expect my friend Jean is already on to it which will make for another story.

*Spurgeon, Darrell, Discover Eltham, 2000

Picture; Ivy Court, from The story of Royal Eltham, R.R.C. Gregory, 1909 and published on The story of Royal Eltham, by Roy Ayers, http://www.gregory.elthamhistory.org.uk/bookpages/i001.htm

Christmas with the Lion …………..

The comic annual has a long history.

They were produced for the Christmas market and were a mix of the favourite stories and articles drawn from the weekly comic.

For me, its golden age was in the 1950s, and the preeminent comic book was the Eagle, with its companions, Girl, Swift and Robin.

That said there were others, and of these I suppose I was most drawn to the Lion, which like its weekly comic version was a less sophisticated product than the Eagle.

The artwork was cruder, the size of the comic smaller and some of the stories lacked the detail of my Eagle.

But I never quite forgot the Lion, and yesterday three of the annuals were sent to me by Steve.

They are dated, 1954, 1955, and 1956, and of the three it is the last that struck me most because it was the one I was given.

Who gave me the book I can’t remember, but as Dad and mum always bought me the Eagle, I guess it was an uncle.

Looking through the 1956 annual, I recognize the stories and can vividly recall some of them, and more than a few of the individual pictures.

The key stories were those that would appeal to any 1950s lad, of which space, knights in armour and westerns predominated.

I must confess back then and even now I preferred the strip cartoons and avoided those stories which were all print.

Like Eagle, the Lion annual had a its share of factual material which in 1956 included “When the Romans went Chariot Racing, “Wonders of Outer Space”, and the “World Wide Quiz”.

But there was less of it than in Eagle, and the themes were far more Eurocentric.

Added to which the books felt cheaper, partly because of the poorer quality paper that was used.

There will be those who think I am being a tad unfair and flicking through the 1954 annual there was a fascinating account of what life on the Moon might be like, which makes interesting reading seventy-one years after it was written and just fifteen before the first moon landing.

And the three annuals are of their time, which rather makes them history books in their own right, and so I shall close with the "Picture Parade of Facts Near and Far", with the account of robot made by a boy in the USA and the one I vividly remember when during “a football match was in progress between two fire brigade teams at Liverpool, a cry of FIRE! Rang out.  The game stopped abruptly, and everyone looked for the fire.  It was in a player’s pocket, where a box of matches had burst into flame”.

Now that has to be very 1950s.

But having renewed an old acquitance, I happily turned to my old friend the Eagle, and spent an happy half hour.

Location; the 1950s










Pictures; from the covers of the Lion Annuals, 1954-1956 and the Eagle annual, 1956 from the collection of Andrew Simpson